Saturday, November 19, 2016

Under Duress or Trying to Impress

I started going to yoga classes about 8 months ago and I completely love it. I find it so relaxing, but also strengthening. Not only do I get in the stretching that I desperately need sometimes, but I also get to build up to fun poses that I never thought I could possibly do. I can no longer think of a better way to start off my weekdays.

Based on the classes I've been to, it seems pretty obvious to me that yoga is quite female dominated. That's not to stay you don't see guys in class from time to time, but I would say majority of the time my classes are made up of only women. I'm still trying to fully understand why this is. I feel like many of the poses would be easier for men because they have much more natural upper body strength than women do. However, I suppose women are more graceful, in general. Needless to say, I would argue that most men are not as taken by yoga as I was.

Despite this fact, I, all too often, see men who are clearly dragged to a yoga class by their significant other. This is something I will never understand. I feel like yoga is an incredibly personal thing for me. I don't even know if I would enjoy yoga as much if I went to classes with friends that also enjoy yoga. It's a rather solitary time for me. I could never get someone to love yoga the way I do, by dragging them there kicking and screaming. Most of these type of men that attend under duress do actually try to enjoy it, but it's still distracting to me, because they are clearly trying to impress their girlfriends and the girlfriends themselves are trying to prove that yoga is amazing. Sometimes I wish they could have separate classes for such couples so the rest of us didn't have to experience this, but I'm sure this will never happen.

Even though I hate seeing such a misuse of yoga class, I still love going to yoga. I think that I will continue to love yoga for as long as there are girlfriends coercing their boyfriends into going with them to yoga class, which is to say that I don't see this as a phase for me.